Weekly Round-Up Wednesday - 1st February 2023

Screenshot of Diplomatic Victory cinematic in Civilization VI
VICTORY!

The following post is part of a series of posts that are published every Wednesday to update readers on what I've been playing during the week (this also includes games on my "Pile of Shame"). The games to target are picked by Choicest Games contributors Choona, Luke and myself. As I'll be talking about my progress through these games, there may be spoilers ahead, especially for games containing a narrative. Consider yourself warned.


Battlefield 2042

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 100%

I've unlocked everything for Season 3. The game is still a buggy mess. Been getting black screens, sometimes being kicked out for no reason, but occasionally having good fun too. A new update has been released that has brought classes back. I don't like the fact that there are no longer any loadouts (there's basically only four now, one for each class) but will have to make do. The update has also brought a whole bunch of old gadgets and weapons from previous Battlefield games including the Javelin and Tracer Darts!


Sid Meier's Civilization VI

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 100%

Finished a Diplomatic Victory as Lautaro. Part of me thinks diplomatic victories are easy but there have been mixed reports of this on online forums because it's true, the AI will gang up against you in the votes if you're close to winning (and why wouldn't they?). I also found it increasingly harder to retain suzerain status with all city states towards the end so this reduced the amount of diplomatic favour I had. The Climate Accords event helped since I was able to run many successful carbon recapture projects and I think building the Statue of Liberty towards the end sealed their fate (+4 Diplomatic Victory points).


Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 53%

I now have a bar in Bountiful Vista after securing the 30,000 credits required to hire a bartender. The bar is rather boring though, there aren't any mini-games available to play with while you're in there! Adding the second level of cargo extender to my freighter has really helped me to rake the dough in fast which is why I now have a Level 3 Powerplant and Shield Generator. Mining asteroids has also proved to be quite lucrative too although I find it cumbersome having the Mining Laser combined with the other offensive weapons I have installed on the front of the ship. I used to have it installed on one of my turrets, which would make more sense, but I found it time-consuming trying to align the ship at the right angle to the asteroid I wanted to mine.


Horizon Chase Turbo - Senna Forever

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 80%

Not much to say about this anymore. Just trying to complete it so I can give it a review.


Space Crew: Legendary Edition

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 25%

I lost my ship! The whole sequence reminded me of the scene in Mass Effect 2 when you have crew members running off to escape capsules as the ship burns. All crewmembers automatically rush to the escape pods to abandon ship except the captain who stays at the helm until you manually order him/her to go to the escape pod. It turns out my gut instinct was right in the mission I lost my ship since I was originally planning to focus on getting to the next jumpgate ASAP. However, a secondary mission came up saying if I didn't hack some comm buoy soon, lots of alien reinforcements would converge on my position. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible which would've probably worked better, but instead since I was unable to hack the buoy in time (as I was already being attacked by a wave of enemies) their force tripled in size and it was just too much to handle.

Thankfully the entire crew made it to the escape pods and were recovered. In fact, they had a 95% chance of getting out alive apparently, maybe because I was at Mars which is "near" Earth? I'm not sure. The downside of losing my ship is the replacement ship is nowhere near as good and I don't have enough credits to get it to the same level of survivability as the last one, which is a problem. I don't even have enough money to purchase six escape pods, so if a similar scenario occurs again, not everyone is going to survive.


Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 12%

I've finished the first two chapters in this game and there's a lot to like here. I love the graphics, the background music and even the licensed music (it's kind of embarrassing but it's very similar to my own actual playlist). I also love the constant banter and bickering between the Guardians and how you're able to pick responses to conversations similar to Telltale adventures (I'm guessing it will matter later, just not sure how). There's even a "huddle" system where during a fight you have to encourage the team to keep going which further reinforces this narrative that Peter Quill might not seem as intelligent or strong as some of the other Guardians, but he makes up for it by being a leader, by being someone that keeps the misfits together as a team.


Cook, Serve, Delicious 3!?

  • Picked by Me
  • Percentage Complete = 2%

Thanks to a generous friend (Cannibal Countess), I managed to score the third entry in the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series. I'm struggling to take screenshots in this game but I think this was an issue with previous Cook, Serve, Delicious games and it's probably a Gamemaker issue. So, apologies beforehand if you don't get to see many screenshots of this game.

The events of Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! occur sometime after the second game in the year 2042. Like Battlefield 2042, the world is a post-apocalyptic one wracked by civil unrest, rising sea levels and natural disasters. The tower that originally housed your restaurant is destroyed but you are rescued by recovery robots who happen to be your biggest fans. As a result, they decide to repurpose their truck as a food truck so you can run your business on the road, and this is the biggest change between the previous games and this one.

While most of the gameplay will feel familiar, there are some incremental improvements and changes. For example, your robot buddies can autoserve any orders that are ready (and don't require any further chef intervention). This allows you to dramatically speed up how quickly you can deliver dishes to customers. However, this also means you have to prepare a lot of food before each stop since basically the customers all come at once instead of one at a time like in previous games. In between stops you will have no customers, so the game is a bit more binary than previous titles in that regard, where you have set preparation times and set serving times (although you can do some extra cooking during this time if need be). There's definitely a bigger focus on preparing food beforehand in this version, at least that's how it feels so far.


LINK: [ The Pile of Shame ]

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